Anno 117: Pax Romana's Top Secret Is a Breathtaking First-Person Mode.
Wait — did you know gamers have the option to enjoy Anno 117: Pax Romana using a first-person camera? If you're thinking that, you feel equally astonished as my own reaction when I discovered this concealed mode. Allow me to step away from my empire’s management, delegate it to a reliable subordinate, borrow a cart, and take a spin around the classical city.
How to Access the First-Person Feature
As a city-building game, Anno 117: Pax Romana usually operates using a top-down camera. However, if you press a covert button sequence — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard or else “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on console — it becomes possible to roam the realm as a regular inhabitant. Because an analogous secret was included in the previous Anno title, I felt excited to experience it in the latest installment, yet I had doubts it would work prior to being stuck in a Celtic building (which probably wasn’t intended — this option can be prone to glitches now and then).
Discovering the Ancient Streets
Once I crawled out, I walked the busy roads across my settlement and toured stalls, alehouses, flower fields, and seafood collectors — it felt magnificent to observe all my hard work through a fresh lens. I detected a variety of intricacies that would escape notice from above: Front door decorations, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, chickens running loose, people relaxing on their verandas… Merely examining the shape of a window sill and the coloration on a post proves fascinating to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
Beyond Simple Strolling
Yet, the experience extends to the first-person feature in Anno 117 aside from meandering through streets. I felt particularly pleased upon discovering that not only could I observe crop lands, but also enter them. And even though I thought interiors would be restricted, I could walk onto mud extraction sites, tour an esteemed educational structure while lessons were in session, and invade personal courtyards. Don't bother with door access (not even the developers have the budget for that), yet it's completely feasible wander through a grain field, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and take a peek inside any small shack as long as the door is absent.
Graphics and Ambiance
While I was completely ready to see my metropolis represented with outdated visual quality, apart from certain rough movements and periodic inhabitants sitting within a bench rather than on a bench, the immersive perspective seems much better than expected. The intricately designed surfaces (particularly rock faces) really have no business being this good in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You may not see specific hair details, yet you will notice writings on surfaces, flames emitting from lights, brick decoloration, eye details, and conifer needles. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and distant stellar illumination, creates a particularly moody setting, and also a lot less scary versus the earlier title, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble nightmarish entities now.
Experimentation and Customization
Given the covert first-person feature doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I chose to test various actions, and promptly found the abilities to leap, run, and zoom in or out — the zoom function permitting me to change from first-person to third-person mode and return. I then experimented with some number buttons and discovered that I could change my character’s appearance. Yellow toga? Crimson attire? Blue and purple toga? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, preferably, wear an archer's uniform; if you activate the engage command, you’ll fire burning arrows into the sky. In case you’re wondering, it’s not possible to kill civilians (not that I’ve tried, of course).
Comedy and Population Encounters
However, I had no desire to injure my people, because they’re way too funny. Shortly after I activated the immersive perspective, I heard a parent advising their offspring that “Owning a fox is prohibited and if you feed it one more chicken, your grandmother will be furious.” Rightly so, Roman dad. A friendly native Celtic person then proceeded to praise my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by describing it as “Ideal combination,” meanwhile a grumpy senior female opted to menace me: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”
The Thrill of Transportation
Just as I assumed I’d discovered all there is to discover in the title's first-person feature, I found the joys of joyriding across historical settings. Entirely by accident, I selected a carriage and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Cattle, asses, even people-powered transports; you can control each one as desired. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, is pretty fast, although you shouldn't expect any GTA-like shenanigans — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (again, not saying I’ve tried).
Battle Constraints
The only thing that disappointed me in Anno 117’s first-person mode was learning about my exclusion from in combat situations. Equipped in warrior attire, I charged toward adversaries during active combat and endeavored to damage them, only to be ignored completely. The front-row seat was still rather spectacular, and watching the enemy run, their limbs waving wildly, proved very satisfying, but it would’ve been cool to actually hit something using my fiery projectiles.
